Gate count on the compression area of an image sensor chip used within a video capturing device (e.g., a digital camcorder or a web cam) is a major factor in the cost of the sensor chip. As such, if the gate count of the compression area can be reduced, then the manufacturing cost of the video capturing device containing the sensor chip can be reduced.
Compression methods such as JPEG are typically used to compress the video images captured by the sensor area of the sensor chip within the video capturing device (e.g., a digital camcorder). However, JPEG style compression area on a video capturing device requires buffers that occupy a sizeable portion of sensor chip in the video capturing device. The high gate count of the compression area necessitates high manufacturing cost of the video capturing device.